Set up the RUM browser extension

This feature is currently in Beta. During the Beta phase, the Dynatrace Real User Monitoring browser extension is only available for Google Chrome. Future releases will include browser support for Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox. Have comments for the team related to this great new feature? Send us your feedback

The RUM browser extension provides a means of gathering Real User Monitoring data from the SaaS-licensed 3rd-party applications that are critical to the success of your business (for example, Office 365, Workday, Concur, Google Apps, Zendesk, and Confluence) for which you don't have access to the underlying application servers or HTML page source.

When to use the RUM browser extension

Typically, the easiest way to gather RUM data for your application is to install OneAgent on your application servers—full-stack monitoring, which includes Real User Monitoring, is then enabled by default, with no additional configuration required. If you don't have access to your application servers, you can alternatively use the agentless RUM approach. With agentless RUM, you manually modify the HTML of each of your application's pages to include a pre-configured JavaScript tag (for example, via templates or a tag manager).

If neither the OneAgent full-stack monitoring approach or the agentless RUM approach is feasible in your environment (for example, because you don't have access to your application servers and you can't manually inject the RUM JavaScript tag into the HTML of each of your application's pages), try the RUM browser extension.

Click the Dynatrace icon (grayed out) in the browser toolbar to open the Chrome extension.

Paste in the copied URL and click the Connect applications button.

If the extension successfully fetches the configuration, you'll see the following message: Applications successfully connected

Switch back to Dynatrace and type a Name for your application.

Define the URL injection pattern. This is a regex pattern that the extension applies to the current URL. When the pattern matches, the extension injects the Dynatrace JavaScript tag and begins gathering RUM data.

Click Create application.

Open the Chrome extension again and click the Connect applications button again (to ensure that you've loaded the latest configuration).

Open a new browser tab and visit the configured application. You'll now see that the Dynatrace icon is displayed in full color. This means that the extension has injected the JavaScript tag successfully and monitoring of the page is underway. If you switch back to Dynatrace, you'll see the first user actions coming in. Click View application to view the application's overview page.

URL pattern matching

This pattern is a regular expression. It defines when the extension should inject the JavaScript tag into the pages of the configured application. The configured regex is applied to the current URL.

For example if you open Outlook 365 in your browser, you'll see a URL similar to
https://outlook.office.com/owa/?realm=mycompany.com&exsvurl=1&ll-cc=1033&modurl=0
If you define the following URL pattern: outlook\.office\.com the regex will match and the extension will gather RUM data for this page. Note that this same regex pattern is not a match for the Office 365 homepage, https://www.office.com/?auth=2&home=1.

There are several online tools available to test your regular expressions (for example, Regex101).

The URL pattern can be modified any time via application-level settings (Application settings > Setup).

Configuration endpoint

There is an API endpoint used by the extension to fetch the current list of configured applications. The extension automatically fetches the latest configuration every 10 minutes and on each browser. You can access your configuration endpoint via application-level settings (Application settings > Setup), or you can select Deploy Dynatrace from the navigation menu and click the Monitor via browser extension button.

Test your configuration

If you've download the extension via the Dynatrace UI, the extension will be set to Admin mode. Admin mode enables you to edit the configuration endpoint by clicking the Dynatrace icon in your browser toolbar or application-level settings (Application settings > Setup). This mode is intended for Dynatrace admins who want to test the extension and configuration before deploying the extension company-wide.

Click either the Connect applications button or the Fetch configuration button to immediately fetch the latest application configurations from your Dynatrace environment.

Deploy the RUM browser extension

After verifying your configuration, you likely want to deploy the extension, either company-wide or for a specific group of users.

To deploy the extension

The extension must be added to Chrome's ExtensionInstallForcelist policy.

Verify your deployment

You can verify a successful deployment of the extension by opening the chrome://extensions page in Chrome. The Dynatrace extension should be listed there. You'll also notice a small icon on the right (instead of the recycle bin) which indicates that the extension was installed via the ExtensionInstallForcelist policy.

To verify the extension is configured correctly, open the page chrome://policy. Here you should see two entries for the policies adminMode and fetchURL under Dynatrace Real User Monitoring extension. Verify that they are set to the intended values.

Now visit one of the applications you're monitoring. If everything works, the Dynatrace icon in your browser toolbar will be displayed in full color and Real User Monitoring data will be captured. If the icon remains in a grayed out state, verify your configured URL pattern. If the icon is displayed in color, but Dynatrace is not capturing RUM data, continue your troubleshooting.